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NEWS
1-5-9
FOOD LP Now Available for Pre-Order!
(To skip the bullshit and hear a song, go here)
Im very excited to awaken my label from its 13 month slumber with the grungy
low end sounds of a low key Richmond band called FOOD
(see FOOD worship rant in prior post). Pre orders will be shipped out at the
end of January. Also, in celebration of the FOOD LP’s release, I am selling
the other releases at a cheap price. You can place a pre-order here,
or below...
*artwork by Jules Buck Jones
"FOOD plays muddy rock, with misanthropic
themes, appealing to fans of the punky grunge that first came from the Pacific
Northwest and the hardcore dirges that followed. Instead of crawling into the
bong and relying on sludge-rock parlor tricks, FOOD cranks up the speed and
excitement, and injects their music with a positive element, celebrating the
beauty of nature. This is granite rock, not stoner rock.
These lyrical themes – the inferiority
of human angst as compared to the might and splendor of the natural world –
mirror the lives of these musicians who call Richmond, Virginia home base. Like
Haley's Comet, or a rotation of the earth, FOOD is only in full view once in
a long while. Guitarist and principle songwriter Johnny Fink spends his summers
as a Park Ranger in the western national parks, while drummer Jeff Grant roves
between Virginia and Indiana, playing guitar and singing in a pop-punk band.
Only taking breaks to coax the lowest end possible from his bass, Ryan McLennan
typically retreats into his Richmond art studio, creating Audubon-inspired paintings.
Imagine a tree root making its way through
a full stack. A cymbal's crash echoing across a canyon while the sound of a
drop-tuned guitar mirrors the call of a wild bird. That is FOOD, as enjoyed
in rare captivity for five songs on this self-titled forty-minute album, available
on 180-gram vinyl from Molsook Records. Listen then leave, remembering the songs
while you breathe mountain air."
-CT Terry
8-11-8
Hello...So I FINALLY got this website launched! In the next few weeks I will be updating the online store, adding artist bios, and announcing some records on the horizon...But for now its time to tell you all about the next release....
The very first show I went to after moving to Richmond, VA in 2003 was for a local band called FOOD. A friend of mine encouraged me to go, saying that being a fan of Melvins and all that kind of stuff, FOOD was a band I would absolutely love. One minute into their opening long winded intro, I conceded that he was right. The bassist hammered out on an open drop D in syncopation with steady loud snare hits that reminded me of the opener on Melvins' Gluey Porch Treatments. A Fender Strat through a Marshall full stack was relentless with feedback laden barred chord run downs decending into Karp-like grooves. And noisey vocals not too unlike that of Unsane were icing on the cake! With one taste of their first song and the look of their set up, these dudes were definitely going for loud and heavy. But in a time where it was starting to become pretentious to have a shit ton of amps to mask bland open chord "stoner rock," I could tell that FOOD's music meant something more to them. They were paying homage to the bands they loved and carrying on what their influences introduced to them while having fun with it the whole time through. They cranked out grungy music that felt so akin to my high school days, I almost couldn't accept them being written after 1995. This band hit me right in the chest and nailed the reasons that I fell in love with this music to begin with. When I realized that I couldn't stop smiling through their entire set, I decided that FOOD was the band I had been wanting to exist. Unfortunately this was to be their last show before a long hiatus while their guitarist and main song writer went back out West to work for nature conservation.
But 5 years later, I'm very excited to announce that the next MolSook release is FOOD's long overdue LP! FOOD plays loud and heavy, similar to the quicker thrashy songs on Karp's Suplex, or even Nirvana's Bleach, to the slower grooves of Sleep's Holy Mountain and The Melvins. This release will consist of five environmentally themed songs (40 minutes) written in the soggy NorthWest, honed in dirty Richmond, VA, and captured on some nice 180 gram vinyl. The record will be a pressing of 300, and the artwork will be supplied by the visual madman Jules Buck Jones. Recorded last October in Philly by Steve Roche at Permanent Hearing Damage and mastered by Nick Zampiello (Isis, Torche, Converge) at New Alliance East.
FOOD consists of members from Virginia bands like Churl, Pink Razors, Wilderness
Medicine, Stop It!, & Tigershark (sort of) But don’t listen for these
credentials...you won't hear them!
FOOD is definitely music for people who enjoy bands like Hammerhead, Godhead Silo, Unsane, Nirvana, C Average, Karp, Houdini-era Melvins, and most of the louder AmRep bands you can think of.
I couldn't be more stoked about this record!
xoxo,
MSR